Monday, 1 December 2014

Must-see presentation by Erin Pizzey at the “Ideology to Inclusion” Conference, Sacramento, February 16th, 2008.

Erin
begins with the early history of the domestic violence movement, and
her efforts to open the first shelter for women and children in 1971.
The early history of the feminist movement in England is discussed, and
the ensuing battle between advocates who conceptualised domestic
violence as a human and family issue rather than a gender issue, and
those who used the movement as a means of funding and advancing a radial
political ideology based on Marxist teaching. This presentation
describes in detail the importance of this ideological split, and how
the needs and wishes of women themselves have often been ignored. The
presentation ends with a general descriptions of where we are now and
suggestions for the future.

Tuesday, 23 September 2014

I was not raised a celebrity. I can say that my life has been very different from yours. I am a woman living in America. I have not attended a fine University like Brown as you did. I have known abuse, I have been molested. I have known hardship and depression. But there is something you should know. I don’t need feminism.

Maybe you can’t understand why this might be so. How someone like me who has in the past been suicidal and faced such turmoil could say that I do not need something that is supposed to help the whole world.

I want you to know that I am neither religious nor someone politically conservative, and I say this because many have accused me of this stance for merely disagreeing with feminism. Your idea of feminism is certainly beautiful, but it is not the reality of the woman’s movement today nor was it the reality of the past.

That is what saddens me. When I was younger I got it into my head that I needed to be strong and empowered and eventually I got there, but when I finally met other feminists I did not see a group of strong self-reliant women infront of me. I saw women who wanted others to do the work for them.

They did not understand that empowerment is something that only you can bring to yourself. People can talk all day about women doing great things. People can give them thousands of dollars of grant money, but it all means nothing if these women won’t do the work themselves. Therein lies the problem of the feminist ideology. It preaches that we must empower women but never asks women to empower themselves or demands that they become capable and self-reliant.

I don’t think that many in the west disagree that women are deserving of all the rights and privileges of men. The truth is far more sinister. I don’t often hear men say that women don’t deserve these things by any stretch of the imagination. The majority of people I hear saying that women are oppressed are feminists.

I don’t see it in the actions of men in the population save for the percentage of the population that engages in violent crime. There will always be meanspirited people. There will always be some people that commit violent acts against their fellow humans, and that is not gendered. Feminism can not fix these things.

You can not fix the portion of humanity that does not care about others and do not care if people are harmed. They are not people that can be persuaded.

The reason that women detach themselves from the label of feminist, has nothing to do with the idea of women’s rights being radical. It isn’t, it makes logical sense. The problem lies with the actions of feminists and actions going beyond achieving the privileges men have. There are man-hating feminists and the narrative that men can stop things like sexual assault is what starts it.

When you say that men can stop sexual assault on their own you are imagining men as one big group that congregates together and can stop the socipathic individuals that predate on others. Sexual assault is not a mistake, or a lapse in judgment. It is not something learned or taught to rapists by society. It is instead a rejection of society. It persists in spite of those who preach equal treatment.

This narrative erases victims of female predators who operate like male sexual predators and exist in greater numbers than you would expect. The problem is that because feminism preaches that men are the abusers that can stop rape, it erases men and women who are victimized by women. Even worse, these women do not face jail time equal to that of their male counterparts. That is not equal treatment and that is not justice.

Painting women as victims does not help them to be seen as the equals of men. It makes them appear weak which is contrary to that which feminism says it wants to accomplish. Because of that you have female predators out of jail after only a few months ready to prey on their next victim.

This is not the story that modern feminism wishes to tell. It is not the story that it wishes to acknowledge. It won’t mention women in “oppressed” countries rising to the occasion in spite of everything. It won’t mention that women in these “oppressed” countries enter STEM fields in greater number to those of the west or that many of them are strong in their own right. Feminism didn’t make them so.

Instead feminism preaches, Look at those women, they are victims, we have to get men to save them. Is that not the worst thing you could do? Are you not continuing gender stereotypes in assuming that men need to be the ones to empower women? Is it not harmful to tell a woman that she is not strong enough on her own, and that she needs all these other women to empower her?

Women won’t identify as feminists because the women within feminism rely so much on the sisterhood that they do not pursue self-reliance. These women do not heal when they’ve been victimized because the sisterhood tells them that it’s fine to live as a perpetual victim instead of a survivor.

These feminists do not live up to your lofty ideals. The feminists who govern these groups are often corrupt and profit directly from keeping women victims. They profit from the narrative that men are the aggressors and women are victims.

If you are looking for gender equality in them you will not find it. This is the problem. The majority of women feel alienated from modern feminism because it is not providing the equality that many of them so desperately crave and it ignores the women who use this ideology to further their own ends.

Instead it is the cause for much of the disparity. Policies meant to help women, fail in one major respect. Because they often assume women in general to have a kind of moral superiority. It does not assume that women can act immorally in ways that are equivalient to men. Laws like the Violence against women act in the United States presume men to be the aggressor even when men are calling to report violence against them by their partners.

If you want to help women to be seen as equal to men, we must acknowledge that they are just as capable of vice as their male counterparts and must face equal consequences. If you want real equality, you must dismantle gender bias against men and benevolent sexism against women perpetuated by the legal system.

Women must be willing to take the higher paying dangerous jobs men take. They must be willing to be held accountable and we must be willing to hold them accountable in the way we hold men to be accountable.We must acknowledge that the disparity mentioned most often by feminists can be accounted for, by things like life choices and economic mobility. Poverty accounts for much of the problems of third world countries. War brings poverty and violence to these countries, harming men and women in different, but equally horrific ways. Yet women are the ones most likely to receive money and aid.

Child brides arise out of necessity first in impoverished countries. Families can not afford to feed all of their children and as a result are married off young to keep families afloat. In the minds of those parents they are making certain that she is fed and clothed. You want to help women? Then acknowledge that the problem is a toxic mix of ignorance, tradition, and crippling poverty in countries that are often war-torn that drive these problems and not a lack of chivalry.

It is difficult for women to even dream of a future when their families can barely afford to feed them. How can women get ahead when their clothes are rotting off their bodies and their brothers are being drawn into war because it’s their only hope of making some kind of change.

Feminism can not put food on their tables or stop those wars. Because it is attempting to treat the symptoms of these problems and not the disease. You want to help people? Then wake up! We don’t need chivary! We need honesty! Life is hell for the impoverished, it cultivates victims and criminal behavior.

Those people are in pain, and the discussion as to how to help them begins when we have honest discussions about how men and women both suffer in equal degrees, but the source is this toxic mix of human problems that we’ve yet to solve. Some of which we may never solve. Treating the symptoms is failing.

We must approach the source and come to creative solutions, because as it stands people are dividing themselves over the belief that everyone can be an oppressor or that people are being oppressed in the first world. The wage gap has long since been debunked. Single childless women often out earn men because they make different choices now. They can wait longer to have children due to technological advances, so they make career orientated decisions that allow them to get ahead.

The greatest determination of poverty for a woman is how many children she has and when she has them. Women often make work decisions based upon wanting to spend time with her children. So she’s more likely to take time off to tend to her sick children, to leave work early to pick up the kids, or to get them to things like soccer practice.

This all adds up and that is a major contributor to the disparity in the wage gap and not gender discrimination. When you compare many of the well paying jobs men take to something like being a kindergarten teacher, there is an obvious difference in pay. The studies speaking of a massive pay gap rely on lifetime studies which don’t account for differences in job, whether these women have children, or choose careers that pay less but make them happy.

The key to aiding this problem may well be in making birth control available to men and women and allowing them to choose when to be parents. That will also reduce the population in many problem areas and make it possible for people to do better with the same amount of resources. But it will be difficult and many religious groups simply will not allow it.

But you will likely find the key to aiding poverty stricken people is in advancing science and technology overall, and in safe, effective, affordable, and readily available birth control methods for men and women. The recognition of science and it’s continued progression is the only thing that can move us in that direction.

So I ask that instead of funding campaigns to promote chivalrous behavior in men, that you fund the people that will make that line of reasoning obsolete. I ask that you fund science and technology. Thank you for your time and I hope that you will consider what I have written.

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

If we're genuinely committed to improving the circumstances of women, we need to get the facts straight

Much
of what we hear about the plight of American women is false. Some faux
facts have been repeated so often they are almost beyond the reach of
critical analysis. Though they are baseless, these canards have become
the foundation of Congressional debates, the inspiration for new
legislation and the focus of college programs. Here are five of the most
popular myths that should be rejected by all who are genuinely
committed to improving the circumstances of women:

MYTH 1: Women
are half the world’s population, working two-thirds of the world’s
working hours, receiving 10% of the world’s income, owning less than 1%
of the world’s property.FACTS: This injustice confection is routinely quoted by advocacy groups, the World Bank, Oxfam and the United Nations.
It is sheer fabrication. More than 15 years ago, Sussex University
experts on gender and development Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, repudiated
the claim: “The figure was made up by someone working at the UN because
it seemed to her to represent the scale of gender-based inequality at
the time.” But there is no evidence that it was ever accurate, and it
certainly is not today.

Precise figures do not exist, but no serious economist believes women
earn only 10% of the world’s income or own only 1% of property. As one
critic noted in an excellent debunking in TheAtlantic, “U.S. women alone
earn 5.4 percent of world income today.” Moreover, in African
countries, where women have made far less progress than their Western
and Asian counterparts, Yale economist Cheryl Doss found
female land ownership ranged from 11% in Senegal to 54% in Rwanda and
Burundi. Doss warns that “using unsubstantiated statistics for advocacy
is counterproductive.” Bad data not only undermine credibility, they
obstruct progress by making it impossible to measure change.

MYTH 2: Between 100,000 and 300,000 girls are pressed into sexual slavery each year in the United States.

FACTS: This sensational claim is a favorite of politicians, celebrities and journalists. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore turned it into a cause célèbre. Both conservatives and liberal reformers deploy it. Former President Jimmy Carter recently said that the sexual enslavement of girls in the U.S. today is worse than American slavery in the 19th century.

The source for the figure is a 2001 report
on child sexual exploitation by University of Pennsylvania sociologists
Richard Estes and Neil Alan Weiner. But their 100,000–300,000 estimate
referred to children at risk for exploitation—not actual victims. When three reporters from the Village Voicequestioned Estes
on the number of children who are abducted and pressed into sexual
slavery each year, he replied, “We’re talking about a few hundred
people.” And this number is likely to include a lot of boys: According
to a 2008 census
of underage prostitutes in New York City, nearly half turned out to be
male. A few hundred children is still a few hundred too many, but they
will not be helped by thousand-fold inflation of their numbers.

MYTH 3: In the United States, 22%–35% of women who visit hospital emergency rooms do so because of domestic violence.

FACTS: This claim has appeared in countless fact sheets, books and articles—for example, in the leading textbook on family violence, Domestic Violence Law, and in the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. The Penguin Atlas uses the emergency room figure to justify placing the U.S. on par with Uganda and Haiti for intimate violence.

What is the provenance? The Atlas provides no primary source, but the editor of Domestic Violence Lawcites a 1997 Justice Department study,
as well as a 2009 post on the Centers for Disease Control website. But
the Justice Department and the CDC are not referring to the 40 million
women who annually visit emergency rooms, but to women, numbering about
550,000 annually, who come to emergency rooms “for violence-related
injuries.” Of these, approximately 37% were attacked by intimates. So,
it’s not the case that 22%-35% of women who visit emergency rooms are
there for domestic violence. The correct figure is less than half of 1%.

MYTH 4: One in five in college women will be sexually assaulted.

FACTS: This incendiary figure is everywhere in the
media today. Journalists, senators and even President Obama cite it
routinely. Can it be true that the American college campus is one of the
most dangerous places on earth for women?

The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study,
commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from
2005 to 2007. Two prominent criminologists, Northeastern University’s
James Alan Fox and Mount Holyoke College’s Richard Moran, have noted its weaknesses:

“The estimated 19% sexual assault rate among college women is based
on a survey at two large four-year universities, which might not
accurately reflect our nation’s colleges overall. In addition, the
survey had a large non-response rate, with the clear possibility that
those who had been victimized were more apt to have completed the
questionnaire, resulting in an inflated prevalence figure.”

Fox and Moran also point out that the study used an overly broad
definition of sexual assault. Respondents were counted as sexual assault
victims if they had been subject to “attempted forced kissing” or
engaged in intimate encounters while intoxicated.

Defenders of the one-in-five figure will reply that the finding has been replicated by other studies. But these studies suffer from some or all of the same flaws. Campus sexual assault is a serious problem and will not be solved by statistical hijinks.

MYTH 5: Women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—for doing the same work.

FACTS: No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists,
it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is
simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women
working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations,
positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.

Wage gap activists say women with identical backgrounds and jobs as men still earn less. But they always
fail to take into account critical variables. Activist groups like the
National Organization for Women have a fallback position: that women’s
education and career choices are not truly free—they are driven by
powerful sexist stereotypes. In this view, women’s tendency to retreat
from the workplace to raise children or to enter fields like early
childhood education and psychology, rather than better paying
professions like petroleum engineering, is evidence of continued social
coercion. Here is the problem: American women are among the best
informed and most self-determining human beings in the world. To say
that they are manipulated into their life choices by forces beyond their
control is divorced from reality and demeaning, to boot.

Why do these reckless claims have so much appeal and staying power?
For one thing, there is a lot of statistical illiteracy among
journalists, feminist academics and political leaders. There is also an
admirable human tendency to be protective of women—stories of female
exploitation are readily believed, and vocal skeptics risk appearing
indifferent to women’s suffering. Finally, armies of advocates depend on
“killer stats” to galvanize their cause. But killer stats obliterate
distinctions between more and less serious problems and send scarce
resources in the wrong directions. They also promote bigotry. The idea
that American men are annually enslaving more than 100,000 girls,
sending millions of women to emergency rooms, sustaining a rape culture
and cheating women out of their rightful salary creates rancor in true
believers and disdain in those who would otherwise be sympathetic
allies.

My advice to women’s advocates: Take back the truth.

Christina Hoff Sommers, a former philosophy professor, is a
resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author
of several books, including Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys, and is the host of a weekly video blog, The Factual Feminist. Follow her @CHSommers.

Thursday, 21 August 2014

People believe that where there’s smoke there’s fire, but sometimes there is just a smoke machine.

By treating Cliff Richard
as though he were a bank robber or a mass murderer, the police from
Thames Valley and South Yorkshire, aided and abetted by the BBC and a
Sheffield lay justice, have blasted his reputation around the world
without giving him the first and most basic right to refute the
allegation.

Last year, apparently, a complaint was made to police that the singer had indecently assaulted a youth in Sheffield a quarter of a century ago.
The police had a duty to investigate, seek any corroborating evidence,
and then – and only if they had reasonable grounds to suspect him of
committing an offence – to give him the opportunity to refute those
suspicions before a decision to charge is made.

But here, police subverted due process by waiting until Richard had
left for vacation, and then orchestrating massive publicity for the raid
on his house, before making any request for interview and before any
question could arise of arresting or charging him.

Police initially denied “leaking” the raid, but South Yorkshire Police finally confirmed yesterday afternoon that they had been “working with a media outlet” –
presumably the BBC – about the investigation. They also claimed “a
number of people” had come forward with more information after seeing
coverage of the operation – which leads one to suspect that this was the
improper purpose behind leaking the operation in the first place. This
alone calls for an independent inquiry.

The BBC and others were present when the five police cars arrived at
Richard’s home, and helicopters were already clattering overhead. Police
codes require that “searches must be conducted with due consideration
for the property and privacy of the occupier and with no more
disturbance than necessary” – here, the media were tipped off well ahead
of time, and a smug officer read to the cameras a prepared press
statement while the search was going on.

The police, by choosing to raid the property in broad daylight where
they must have known its occupant was away, deliberately chose to defame
him. Police codes also insist that “the officer in charge of the search
shall first try to communicate with the occupier” but of course no such
attempt was made – Richard first heard of the search when his lawyers
called him after watching it on television.

Why was a search warrant granted? The law (the 1984 Police and
Criminal Evidence Act) requires police to satisfy a justice of the peace
not only that there are reasonable grounds for believing an offence has
been committed (if so, why had he not already been arrested?), but that
there is material on the premises both relevant and of substantial
value (to prove an indecent assault 25 years ago?).

Moreover, the warrant should only be issued if it is “not practicable
to communicate” with the owner of the premises – and it would be a very
dumb police force indeed that could find no way of contacting Cliff
Richard. The police Codes exude concern that powers of search “be used
fairly, responsibly, with respect for occupiers of premises being
searched” – this search was conducted without any fairness or respect at
all, other than for the media who were given every opportunity to film
the bags of “evidence” being taken away.

This in itself is an interesting example of how historic English
liberties – the rule against “general search warrants” achieved by John
Wilkes in the 18th century – are now ignored. Although there is a
section of the law headed “Search warrants – Safeguards” and a provision
which requires police when applying for a warrant to actually identify
the article they are looking for, this is routinely ignored. Here the
police searched for five hours and took whatever they wanted.

This behaviour is unacceptable. The lay justice system has long been
the Achilles heel of our civil liberties: many of these amateurs simply
rubber stamp police requests. It is not known who issued this warrant
(although the High Court has held that the identities of JPs should be
made public).

What qualifications did he or she have and what steps were taken to
protect the occupier’s privacy? What justification did the police give
for this general search, with world-wide publicity? Was there any
questioning of the police, so as to ensure that they could identify what
they were looking for, and that it had “substantial value” for a
prosecution? How was the Justice of the Peace satisfied that this whole
exercise was not an improper means to publicise an uncorroborated
allegation against the singer, in the hope of “shaking the tree” to
attract further allegations which might give it some credibility? It is
time that police were required, other than in emergencies, to obtain
search warrants from circuit judges, who are alert to civil liberties.

What will happen now? If the outrageous treatment of Paul Gambuccini
and Jimmy Tarbuck is any guide, Cliff Richard will remain in a cruel
limbo for 18 months or so until the police and the CPS decide whether to
charge him. This has been one of the most intolerable features of other
high-profile arrests for "historic" offences, namely the inability of
police and prosecutors to deliver Magna Carta’s truly historic promise
that justice will not be delayed.

The CPS has taken up to 2 years to tell journalists like Patrick Foster that they will not be prosecuted,
after unnecessary dawn raids, and publicity every time they are bailed.
This lack of care for their liberty is amoral, because it subjects them
to drawn-out psychological cruelty. If the CPS cannot decide whether to
prosecute 3 months after receiving the police file, it should not
prosecute at all.

A case like that of Cliff Richard could not happen in most European
countries, where time limits prevent prosecutions of most sexual
offences after a lapse of 10 years. Certainly after 25 years, fair trial
becomes very difficult, as memories dim, alibi witnesses die and
records disappear.

That does not necessarily mean that a prosecution is unjustified,
especially in the case of those in positions of authority (priests,
teachers, politicians etc) but it does require extra vigilance by law
enforcement authorities to ensure that those under investigation do not
have their names prematurely besmirched, and that they be given a fair
opportunity to refute allegations before they are brought to court.

The police behaviour is also in plain breach of the privacy
provisions of article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. But
this case involves good old English civil liberties, laid down not 25
years but 250 years ago, in the course of a battle between John Wilkes
and the government of George III. The Chief Justice then declared that
an Englishman’s home was his castle – which must come as news to the
South Yorkshire and Thames Valley police.

It is clear from their behaviour that an Englishman’s home is no longer a castle – even when, in Cliff Richard’s case, it is.

Sunday, 17 August 2014

I am going to have to try harder than I already am to avoid newspaper headlines - finding out today that even Sir Cliff is being dragged into the Yewtree witchhunts is genuinely making me feel suicidal. All of Britain seems to have become a Kafka novel, with all men featuring as the protagonists.

In case you somehow haven't realized yet, we live in an age now in which any man can have his whole life destroyed in the worst way imaginable on nothing more than the unsubstantiated word of any person with a grudge he's ever even shared an elevator ride with or, heaven forbid, had consensual sex with.... forty years after the alleged fact.

Seeing each individual bewildered old man going through this unimaginable ordeal is so sad: They cannot quite grasp why the world has turned so crazy and are unable to identify or articulate what machinations have brought it about. So the puppet show continues, and none of the children watching see who is pulling the strings .

The two most important factors in all this repugnant nightmare are the ones almost no-one is mentioning: firstly that Britain is unique in all of Europe in having no statute of limitations when it comes to allegations of sex crimes. This is why we aren't hearing of any similar scandals coming out of France or Germany, or the USA for that matter. This has led to a grossly unjust loophole that only recently has been exploited to bring utterly unfounded accusations with no accompanying physical evidence of any kind to court 40 years after their alleged occurrence and end in convictions.

The second thing is that there has been a 40 year campaign by feminists to expand the definition of rape and sexual assault to include pretty much any physical contact whatsoever, if the woman so decides. They have been wildly successful in their attempts to redefine male sexuality as inherently predatory, pathological and abusive.

This works to the benefit of feminism itself, since it helps to further demonize men and hence draw in more donations, political influence and apparent justification for the otherwise blatant obsolescence of their hate movement. It also benefits the state, because by turning one half of the population against the other half, it fatally weakens any sense of unity and kinship that could otherwise pose a threat to whatever their plans for us are.

But it doesn't help us. All it does is make fundamentally necessary human contact more and more frightening and alien, and all of us more and more isolated and alone. I've said it before many times and before all this is over I'll have
said it many times again: Feminism is a force of oppression, not liberation. It has done more damage to simple, natural human relationships than any other force in human history, and it's nowhere near finished yet.

But the bovine masses don't care, they'll lap the newest 'paedo' scandal up and scream for the heads of those accused, too stupid to realize any one of them could be next. Or their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, their sons. But if they don't speak out against it now, maybe they deserve what's coming. Maybe you do too.

Aw, I can't write any more about this. It's all so black and hopeless, and heartless beyond belief.

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

It's really not often that I cry. In fact, I really can't remember the last time I did, unless it was when my father went into hospital with cancer, which would make it around 2 years ago now. But I woke up today to be told that Robin Williams has died, and it surprised me to find that was my first reaction. I'm not talking big, body-heaving sobs - no cries to God, no wailing or gnashing of teeth. Just a fairly steady brimming up of the eyes, making it hard to see as I write this, and occasionally a stray one that gets away by rolling down my cheek.

I didn't actually know the man, of course. I'll grant you that. But he's in me somewhere nonetheless, and searching myself I find he feels closer to me in some odd ways than all but my closest friends, and there are words he's said up there upon the glowing screen that have meant more to me, and made more of an impression upon me, than anything from the mouths of all my family.

When Leonard Cohen was asked once "what's the greatest myth about fame?", he replied "That it's worthless", and this moment would seem to bear that out. The best thing about fame, when it's earned, is that the very best part of yourself lives on after your death, and you wander on through the dreams of strangers.

Robin Williams first entered my life, I would guess, around the age of 8 or 9. I remember we had some visiting Canadians come stay with us awhile, and they would quote every now and then from a funny TV show we hadn't yet seen on any of our 3 British TV channels."You haven't seen Mork & Mindy?" they said. "Oh, you'll like that". And a year or so later I found out they were right: I did.

Isn't it funny how that is all I actually remember of that couple? I've not remembered their names, their faces, anything else they said, and couldn't even a handful of years later. Their existence is entirely gone from my consciousness, other than that they foretold my encountering a man I'd never meet.

Like most 20th century television, Mork & Mindy was an assembly-line product, hurriedly written, produced and hammed up onscreen by a whoop of hacks who were not then, and never would be, good enough to make it in the movies. But Williams himself was incandescent, something entirely new, and as a child the character of the alien Mork exiled to earth lit up my imagination just as much as Superman and Star Wars had done a year or two earlier.

Every week he'd report back to his home planet 'Ork' about what he'd seen of earth, how crazy it all is here, but also how puzzlingly beautiful the best parts of us are too - the senseless acts of beauty, kindness, selflessness and mercy that raise us up above the mire and make us human at all.

Mork made him a household name around the world, but only as a clown - though a very funny one, and his Live At The Met stand-up special is still one of the top ten greatest of all time (I can still recite just about every line if you start me off, and there's an awful lot of them). But none of the attempts he made to get into films worked out the first few years of trying - the roles never seemed to quite fit him, being either too harrowingly sombre and serious to take from such a karazy comedian, or else silly, shallow, one dimensional cartoon characters (literally, in the case of Popeye).

That all finally changed with his role as army DJ Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam. Here at last was the perfect balance of crazed ebullience and deep, boundless compassion that it seems to me now was present in all his best work, all the way back to Mork, and he built on this and surpassed it effortlessly in his next and greatest role, the schoolteacher all of us wanted but never got, John Keating in Dead Poets Society.

I remember watching this film as a teenager and it speaking to me as profoundly as any film I'd ever seen. I can recall how strongly I identified with the character of Neil, the boy who'd rather take his own life than live one without a dream, being slowly smothered by a lie, and Mr Keating's explanation of poetry might well be the thing that turned my hand to such endeavours in the first place, it's certainly still the standard I judge the essence of my own and others creations against today:

Like the music I first discovered and fell in love with around the same time, Dead Poets Society showed me a window of possibilities outside of the lumpen, utilitarian working class drudgery of my youth, a world of higher ideals, nobler passions and deeper, holier truths.

It truly is one of the greatest films of all time, but in a lot of ways it simply was a better remake of GM,V, and to repeat it again presumably couldn't be done without falling into cliche - lightning had already struck twice, after all. He was never to find a role that fit him so perfectly again, although you could say he reprised it to some degree in his supporting part in Good Will Hunting.

After that peak he somehow lost the ability to be as funny as he was, maybe his schtick had grown too familiar to us for it to keep working, or maybe the weight of age and life experience made 'zany' too hard and embarrassing to pull off. Maybe he just stopped taking cocaine, I don't know. Either way, for the most part he settled into an unhappy routine of dividing his time between cloyingly sentimental family films and too-dark-for-comfort adult roles, and never seeming quite right in any of them. Seeing him interviewed in his later years on TV, he never seemed too pleased with what he'd done, or what he was doing, or for that matter who he was. He drank a lot, I am told, but what was actually going on inside him is probably impossible to say. He was as much a mystery to me as I am to you, and you are to me. The boundaries of our bodies set us apart like plots of land but, through the unfathomable voodoo we call art, the deepest and most worthy parts of ourselves proceed regardless, and go on to find and commune with one another somewhere beyond our allotted 6 feet of space and Google co-ordinates. Beyond time, beyond space, and even beyond the grave, for it is in our secrets we are most alike.

*

His last great film, for me, was Bobcat Goldthwait's older, sadder, wiser 'World's Greatest Dad', the kind of small, original, thoughtful, funny movie it's pretty self-evident now he should have made a lot more of in the time he had left.

But you know what? He made enough. He seized the day, he added his verse and we all read it. And people will still be reading it long after we're gone too.

Saturday, 2 August 2014

Youtube user Monica Edwards on the feminist responses to #womenagainstfeminism. Really good, concise restatement of the antifeminist position and with constructive suggestions for the 'good' feminists who want to do something about it.

As she says, "I keep hearing the same arguments over and over, and if they still aren't working, feminists need to step up their game."

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

The ongoing kerfluffle over the site #WomenAgainstFeminism,
displaying selfies of a number of attractive young women who are all holding
placards declaring why they don’t need feminism, has gone beyond the usual
shame-and destroy tactics that the feminist establishment usually employ. Instead what has happened as these women
quietly but publicly disagreed with the status quo ideology and
dis-identified themselves as feminists is remarkable. Some have likened it to the feminist Berlin
Wall crumbling, or an anti-feminist Arab Spring.

It is telling that it took young women rebelling against
feminist ideology in a public sphere to get prominent (and obscure) feminists
all over the world to listen – if only for a moment – to the same things that
most folks in the Red Pill/MHRA/MGTOW/PUA/OMG community have been saying, some
of us for decades. But when opinions
that issue from the mouths of men are ignored or discounted simply because of
our gender, when feminism refuses to engage in any meaningful dialog with those
it purports to change, then its own unwillingness to participate in a debate it
claims to want demonstrates the disingenuous nature of your ideology.

But ladies, this is what the problem is. Let me mansplain something to you, because
you clearly missed something. I’ll go
ahead and do it in patronizing and patriarchal tones, so that you have an
opportunity to scoff derisively as you read it, desperate for a hint of
misogyny – us white male dissidents understand our role in your ideological
drama, and I would hate to disappoint.

Over and over in these face-palming critiques I keep reading
of your utter horror as you saw one young woman after another (apparently) mis-understand
what feminism “is about”, I hear you complain bitterly that these women are
getting it wrong. Feminism isn’t about
(insert tragic misdiagnosis here) it’s about equality. You quote the dictionary, chapter and verse,
you quote great feminist minds of the past, inspirational voices who led you to
realize what feminism “is about”.

There’s an understandable amount of schadenfreude in the
Manosphere over this, but believe it or not, I’m not gloating. I’m just
vindicated. Many of us predicted this sort of thing would
happen, and gosh darn if it didn’t.

You see, the thing that is driving you crazy is that
feminism is an ideology, but it also functions, in many social ways, like a cult or religion. And while your
intellectual inner circle has been preaching equality for years, regardless of
the strides or gains you may have made, the fact is that your ideology’s public
image has been tarnished badly in the meantime.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you made the same mistake Republican
candidates traditionally make. In an
effort to appease the loudest voices, and maintain the appearance of unity, you
have allowed those voices to dictate the direction of the entire group – or at
least its perception by the public.

There’s a reason that only a small minority of women identify
as feminists these days. The ideology
has become so loaded with baggage from the culture wars of the past that
adherence to it involves picking up that baggage . . . and that’s something
that most women just don’t want to do.

Worse, two decades of systematic targeting of masculinity,
in all of its guises, has managed to alienate nearly all men from your
banner. There was a time, in my fuzzy
youth, when I may have identified myself as a “male feminist”, because I
believed in equality too . . . but I believed in full equality: draft cards,
equitable sentencing, and equal custody and all, and those were issues that
feminism, alas, did not see as germane.

They sure as hell were germane to me. And to a lot of other guys.

Over the years, individual feminists and feminist-oriented
groups made it quite clear that men were not welcome – we were part of
the
problem, and the more we tried not to be, the more you lashed out at us
as
individuals and as a class. Whether you
intended to or not, feminism as a movement became associated with the
callous
disregard of masculine values and the blanket disrespect for male
issues. You couldn't even let a bunch of guys get together and talk
about male homelessness, suicide, and social issues without protesting
and making death threats. Classy, feminism.

We were supportive, once upon a time. But what did we earn from that support? You called us part of "The Patriarchy", taunted
us for our perceived privileges, and never spared the opportunity for shame and
guilt about our gender. We supported
your reproductive freedoms and your right to own your own bodies, and you
called us participants in “rape culture”.
When we threw up our hands and realized that there was no way for you to
be happy with us, you called us “misogynists”.

So we left. There’s a
reason that “male feminists” of any note are as scarce as hen’s teeth
any
more. No one wants to be a male
feminist. You savage them with
particular delight, when they persist in being male, and no man wants to
be
seen publicly working against the best interest of his gender.
Congratulations, ladies. You’ve made “male feminists” an endangered
species.

Like the Republicans, you’ve played to your base and
alienated the mainstream. People don’t associate
feminism with positive values, anymore, and it’s not just Red State hicks and Southern
politicians who feel that way. Feminism
was the ideology that spurred millions of women to divorce and break up their
families, and many of us carry the scars of that decision. Feminism made men fearful to even speak to
women, much less relate to them in a professional manner. While you may see the resulting domination of
women in corporate positions of power as gratifying, understand that it was
done at a price.

You may see feminism as responsible for great strides in
American and World history, and I can’t deny that. So was Marxism, the ideological model
feminism chose to co-opt – the one that equated men with the oppressing class
and validated some feminists’ need to hate men as a class. A lot of us take that personally. Feminism’s unequal treatment of gender issues
across the board has grown so egregious that protecting the virtue of 200
little African girls results in a global awareness campaign, while the brutal
deaths of hundreds of boys in the same conflict earned no attention by
feminism.

You can claim that feminism isn’t about hating men and
punishing boys, Ladies, but the fact of the matter is that this is precisely
how feminism is viewed by a broad plurality – if not a majority – of the men in
America. Not the progressive pals you
keep around you to remind yourself you don’t technically hate all men, but the
dude who changed your oil, mowed your lawn, stocked your groceries and passed
you on the freeway, all of them have a disdain for feminism, as an ideology,
that they would likely never speak to you about.

You've attacked male sexuality with bloodthirsty abandon, belittling the
"male gaze" and objecting to "objectification" - without understanding
that objectification is as important to male sexuality as emotional
context is to female sexuality. Your relentless fight against "rape
culture" has put you at odds with every heterosexual man in the country,
as you rampage for the right to only be approached by attractive men,
and demonize unattractive men by their "misogyny". Feminism has been
responsible for more male sexual guilt than the Catholic Church. But
you don't know that, because we stopped talking to you a long time ago.

Because speaking to feminists about feminism when you
disagree with the culture that has sprung from the ideology is akin to speaking
to a cult member. Every stay-at-home mom
who decided to spend her best reproductive years making a home and building a
family with a loving husband has been called to task for her choice – “you
could be so much more”, “why are you letting him keep you isolated?”, “don’t
you want to prove you can make something of yourself?”, these are all the
catty, snide little ways feminists have promoted your ideology.

In seeking equal opportunities for women, feminism has
denigrated the role of wife and mother that so many women desire. Voicing a preference for Blue’s Clues over
Black’s Legal Dictionary gets a woman pilloried in our post-feminist society,
as you well know. By placing careerism over
the desire for a family, feminism has inadvertently doomed hundreds of thousands
of successful career women to childlessness, as the “good” men they plan on
settling for after they’ve established themselves in careers seek less-driven
mates to be the mothers of their children.
The frustration among the professional class of feminist is
palpable. Yet feminism teaches them that
it is men’s fault, or the fault of the Patriarchy, or ageism, or whatever
rationalization is in vogue at the moment.

Those rationalizations, as thousands of women are
discovering, don’t keep you warm at night.

But not only has feminism alienated men of good will and
mothers, feminism has consistently besieged one of the most hallowed areas of
femininity: marriage.
In its efforts to protect women in abusive relationships, feminism has
waged an unrelenting war against one of the pillars of femininity. No, not all women want to get married – but for
those who do, and there are a lot of them, feminism has successfully weakened
the institution to the point where feminism has become the antithesis of a
happy marriage.

Just watch how apologetically a feminist announces her
engagement. I had that pleasure,
recently, and watching this woman squirm while she had to admit to her
equally-feminist friends that she wanted a husband – not that she needed a
husband, but (like a handbag or a new car) she wanted one – was an awkward
moment. Of course, she could not bring
herself to actually say the word, “husband” – she said “partner” – and she
instantly declared that she would not take his name. Go girl. I felt humiliated and emasculated on her bridegroom's behalf.

But while I quietly congratulated her on her marriage, the
fact is that feminism, regardless of its vaunted goal of equality, has consistently
tarnished and weakened an institution that a majority of women hold sacred . .
. and they have muddied the waters of non-feminist women considerably by their
approach. That hasn't garnered feminism any positive public relations.

Men are reluctant and fearful to marry now, thanks in part
to feminist-inspired pro-divorce culture, alaEat, Pray, Love. Feminism’s successful war on the patriarchal
expectation of sex in marriage has removed the insulation married women once
had from the Sexual Marketplace, making their husbands prey to predatory women
and devaluing their own sexual contributions.
When feminism made it clear that a husband had no native right to his
wife’s body, it also undermined the marital exchange to the point where she can
no longer be certain of his fidelity.
Feminism is synonymous with divorce, not happy wives, in the real world
beyond the ivory tower.

(It might be helpful if feminism stopped treating the term "wife" like a
death sentence. Requiring a woman to apologize for her marriage and
her husband, and then imposing a lot of humiliating restrictions that
are going to be harmful to the marriage, doesn't win you many allies.
Feminism has made it possible where a little girl can grow up and be a
great feminist anything . . . except a good wife.)

Feminism did itself no favors by encouraging the sassy
self-esteem of two generations of girls. While claiming white men had
unearned privilege, feminism pushed the unearned privilege of white
girls to the breaking point. Many folks are anti-feminists not because
they object to the ideals of
feminism, but because they object to the conduct of feminists. Young women who feel that they are entitled
to pretty much anything they want, who trade on their feminism with threats of
legal action or scandal to get their way, these women aren’t ‘empowered’ – they’re
‘bossy’. That would be one thing if they
were also highly competent and productive, but those are not qualities feminism
has emphasized in its application.

The writings of the Women Against Feminism are telling: to
them (and to the rest of us) feminism is a bunch of angry women screaming
shrilly about how the rest of the world needs to pay attention to them and give
them what they want, in a judgmental, demanding way. The rest of us don’t dislike feminism because
we hate equality, we dislike feminism because for many of us some of the most
unpleasant and difficult-to-work-with people we know are feminists.

We see them not just as unhappy people, but people who have
invested in their unhappiness to the point where they will only be happy when
the rest of the world is just as unhappy as they are. You want to see feminism perceived in a
positive light again? Create a way for a
woman to be a happy feminist. That’s
going to be difficult with an ideology that, practically speaking, sees half of
the human race as an enemy, but give it a shot.
Y’all are creative.

Start by trying not to insult and demean anyone whose opinion
you don’t like. Feminism loves to call
people names, from ignorant to backwards to stupid – and feminists excel at
invective. Tearing someone down verbally
is a high feminist art, and most of us have been the object of that scorn at
one time or another, deserved or not.
When you cannot have a discussion with a feminist without her snorting
about your perceived privilege, or having her try to shame you into working
against your best interest, then engaging in any kind of productive dialog is
challenging. And demanding. And usually self-defeating.

So mostly we just . . . don't. We ignore you. We turn our backs on you
and mostly we just don't entertain a feminist perspective in any sort
of positive way anymore.

As a man I have been called a plethora of vile names and had
my character attacked by feminists, even what were supposed to be reasonable,
academic discussions. Feminists have a
kind of argument cycle that they go through, I’ve observed, in which my
intelligence, education, upbringing, and decency are first brought into
question before they launch into outright misandry and emasculation. At least half of such discussions end with
them questioning my manhood – when I know for a fact how they would have
reacted had I questioned their womanhood.

I’m a big boy. I’m not intimidated
by shrill women who think their ability to “be strong” and “compete”
lies in
their willingness to insult another human being. They have said things
to me that, had we truly lived in world of equality, would have required
them to settle the matter through seconds and over pistols. But
because feminists tend to hide behind "don't hit me, I'm a girl!" when
they decide to engage in such verbal bloodsports, most wise men just . .
. walk away. We're men. We know feminism hates us.

But the things that you’ve called these Women Against
Feminism have been nothing short of vile.
This is what you have to say about these beautiful, intelligent women
who disagree with your political ideology.
Women with three advanced science degrees are called “stupid and
uneducated” because they dare to disagree with feminist ideology. Women
who have made conscientious choices about their lives are being
castigated and threatened. Women who have made up their own damned
minds are being called idiots by other women in a fit of misogyny the
Manosphere could never muster.

It is in your reaction to #WomenAgainstFeminism that you reveal
yourselves, collectively: Feminism has hit the Wall. No one is
responding to your "nice" voice anymore, because you've burned all your
bridges. Now your very daughters are rejecting your ideology and
recoiling in horror from the idea of a "feminist" life. Yes, feminism
is associated with misandry and reactionary man-hating, female
entitlement and anti-male ideology in the minds of most people.

EDIT: A few choice comments:

Emily Shire of The Daily Beast, stating that the movement’s criticism of feminism is “inane, unintelligent, and useless.”

Feminist writer Rebecca Brink published a
satire of the campaign on her blog, calling Women Against Feminism “a
crock of bullshit based on a misunderstanding of feminism and an
ignorance of data and history.”

But like the 35 year old woman who is still trying to rock a miniskirt,
you still think feminism is about equality. No, it is not about
equality, and hasn't been for a long time. What you think feminism is
and what it does in the real world are two entirely separate things, and
your association with an ideology that is, in effect, anti-male,
anti-marriage, and anti-freedom of thought is not doing yourselves any
good.

There's some hope that feminism will redeem itself - plenty of women are
offended at the things being done in the name of their gender, and want
to re-claim the now-poisoned title of feminist. But until feminists
collectively take a good, long, hard look into the mirror and hold
themselves accountable for the sins of their sisters in the name of
their ideology, don't count on a hell of a lot of support from the
victims of feminism. We're not inclined to be charitable about that
sort of thing.

Monday, 28 July 2014

Every time I hear that we live under a “patriarchy,” I close my eyes,
click my heels, snap my fingers, and wish that it were true. But when I
open my eyes, it’s obvious that men in the West are demoralized and in a
pitiful state of disarray. Men have very little group consciousness, if
any, these days. Conversely, it is quite clear that women are in a
state of Peak Hive Mind and will eagerly devour the babies of any female
who does not goosestep in lockstep with third-wave grrl-power feminism.

Or maybe it’s already the fourth or fifth wave. It’s hard to keep up.
I’ve been hoping that sooner or later, one of these waves would have
drowned them all. But alas, all my hope seemed in vain.

Then, suddenly, like a herd of silken-maned pink ponies galloping
toward me in the distant horizon across great barren salt flats that
have been scorched in the war between the sexes, comes a fledgling
mini-movement calling itself “Women Against Feminism” to give me a fleeting, and perhaps ultimately false, sense of hope for the future of gender relations.

“It is no coincidence that modern feminists embody all of the character traits that cause ‘misogyny’ in the first place.”

Granted, they ape the same banal sort of “placard selfie activism”
that infects much of modern online social-justice inanity these days,
but I can overlook that for the sake of the message these gals hold on
their little handwritten posters:

I don’t need feminism because…I’m tired to be, as a woman, represented by some hysterical hipster whores.

I don’t need feminism because I can hold my own beliefs without an army of angry vaginas backing me.

I don’t need feminism because I don’t think it’s necessary to belittle an entire gender in the name of equality.

I don’t need feminism because our sons are not inherent rapists and our daughters are not perpetual victims.

I don’t need feminism because it reinforces the men as agents/women as victims dichotomy.

Why, it’s almost as if I’ve died and gone to Muslim paradise!

Howard Bloom’s book The Lucifer Principle
goes into great detail describing how social movements that initially
claim to merely seek “equality” morph into insatiably power-hungry
predatory super-organisms once their alleged oppressors are willing to
grant them equal treatment. While those making the concessions may think
they’re doing so in the name of “fairness,” groups who are on the
ascent tend to smell blood instead. Once even a semblance of “equality”
is achieved, the mask falls off and it becomes a naked drive for power.
They never seem sated by equality and keep moving the goalposts,
ultimately becoming every bit as oppressive and intolerant as their
former masters.

Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys,
distinguishes between “equity feminism”—i.e., the idea that women
should be treated equally to men—and its malignant successor, “gender
feminism,” which is essentially a folk religion in which women wear
angel wings and men are saddled with devil horns. Sommers describes
herself as a feminist, as does Camille Paglia, but the latter-day gender
feminists consider them traitors to the Holy Cause. Nearly every gal in
the “Women Against Feminism” camp seems to have no beef with equity
feminism but has become nauseated with the incessant ball-busting and
finger-wagging that characterize latter-day gender feminism.

It is no coincidence that modern feminists embody all of the
character traits that cause “misogyny” in the first place. They see rape
everywhere, consider penises no better than assault rifles, deride
masculinity in all its manifestations (except when women act butch), and
brook no dissent in their quest to shout down, shame, hunt, mock,
malign, and even jail anyone who dares to dissent. This is especially
true when it comes to other women. It’s a given that they hate men; but
hell hath no fury like a radical feminist scorned by another woman.

Latter-day feminists—who are an entirely different and far more
hostile breed than those of only a generation ago—will naturally deny
that they seek anything beyond equality, but these squaws speak with
forked tongue. If they cared even one lone curly pubic hair about
equality, they wouldn’t openly pooh-pooh glaring statistical gender
disparities in suicide, homelessness, education, prison sentencing,
workplace deaths, custody disputes, spousal support, and longevity. They
wouldn’t loudly deny the existence of false rape accusations and the
currently unmentionable ubiquity of female violence toward men. They
wouldn’t dub sexually aggressive women as “empowered” while slamming men
who merely make suggestive comments as rapists.

They’ll bitch about a
paucity of female physicists while overlooking a surfeit of female
psychologists, nurses, social workers, and especially teachers.
And you never seem to hear them complain that there aren’t nearly
enough female coalminers, janitors, or sanitation workers.

They’ll even disingenuously claim that this illusory “patriarchy”
harms men, too, which would make it a rather inept patriarchy, no?
What’s the purpose of having a patriarchy in the first place if it
doesn’t benefit men?
In 2001, novelist Doris Lessing bemoaned the castrating vagina dentata hose-beast into which feminism had metastasized:

We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women
everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the
cost of men?... The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can
rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one
protests. Men seem to be so cowed that they can’t fight back, and it is
time they did.

Mein Gott, ’tis like a balm for my beleaguered,
testosterone-addled soul to see all these egg-laying mammals who “get
it.” It’s like a splash of fresh female pheromones to behold women who
have no problem with being women and with men being men. They see
essential gender differences as a biological reality and not a false
“social construct” that needs to be smashed beyond recognition. They
realize that women are human and thus can be every bit as nasty as men.
They don’t allow themselves to be frightened into silence by a small
screeching cabal of power-crazed, gynocentric shrews with a clearly
malicious anti-male “vagenda.” They view men not as a born enemy but a
potential dance partner. They understand that female happiness need not
be predicated upon male misery.

So are these “Women Against Feminism” chicks crazy? No, not one tiny bit. It’s what they’re fighting that’s insane.

Thursday, 24 July 2014

The charge
that feminism stereotypes men as predators while reducing women to
helpless victims certainly doesn’t apply to all feminists—but it’s a
reasonably fair description of a large, influential, highly visible
segment of modern feminism.

The latest skirmish on the gender battlefield is “Women Against Feminism”: women and girls taking to the social media
to declare that they don’t need or want feminism, usually via photos of
themselves with handwritten placards. The feminist reaction has ranged
from mockery to dismay to somewhat patronizing (or should that be “matronizing”?) lectures
on why these dissidents are wrong. But, while the anti-feminist
rebellion has its eye-rolling moments, it raises valid questions about
the state of Western feminism in the 21st Century — questions that must be addressed if we are to continue making progress toward real gender equality.

Female anti-feminism is nothing new. In the 19th
century, plenty of women were hostile to the women’s movement and to
women who pursued nontraditional paths. In the 1970s, Marabel Morgan’s
regressive manifesto The Total Womanwas a top best-seller,
and Phyllis Schlafly led opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. But
such anti-feminism was invariably about defending women’s traditional
roles. Some of today’s “women against feminism” fit that mold: They feel
that feminism demeansstay-at-home mothers, or that being a “true woman” means loving to cook and clean for your man. Many others, however, say they repudiate feminism even though — indeed, because — they support equality and female empowerment:

One common response from feminists is to say that Women Against Feminism “don’t understand
what feminism is” and to invoke its dictionary definition: “the theory
of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” The new
anti-feminists have arejoinder for that, too: They’re judging modern feminism by its actions, not by the book.

Consider the #YesAllWomen Twitter hashtag, dubbed by one blogger “the Arab Spring of 21st
Century feminism.” Created in response to Elliot Rodger’s deadly
shooting spree in Isla Vista, California — and to reminders that “not
all men” are violent misogynists — the tag was a relentless catalog of
female victimization by male terrorism and abuse. Some of its most
popular tweets seemed to literally dehumanize men, comparing them to sharks or M&M candies of which 10% are poisoned.

Consider that a prominent British feminist writer, Laurie Penny, decries
the notion that feminists should avoid such generalizations as “men
oppress women”: In her view, all men are steeped in a woman-hating
culture and “even the sweetest, gentlest man” benefits from women’s
oppression. Consider, too, that an extended quote from Penny’s column
was reposted by a mainstream reproductive rights group and shared by nearly 84,000 Tumblr users in six months.

Sure, some Women Against Feminism claims are caricatures based on fringe views — for instance, that feminism mandates hairy armpits, or that feminists regard all heterosexual intercourse as rape.
On the other hand, the charge that feminism stereotypes men as
predators while reducing women to helpless victims certainly doesn’t
apply to all feminists — but it’s a reasonably fair description of a large, influential, highly visible segment of modern feminism.

Are Women Against Feminism ignorant and naïve to insist they are not
oppressed? Perhaps some are too giddy with youthful optimism. But they
make a strong argument
that a “patriarchy” that lets women vote, work, attend college, get
divorced, run for political office, and own businesses on the same terms
as men isn’t quite living up to its label. They also raise valid
questions about politicizing personal violence along gender lines;
research shows that surprisingly high numbers of men may have been raped, sometimes by women.

For the most part, Women Against Feminism are quite willing to
acknowledge and credit feminism’s past battles for women’s rights in the
West, as well as the severeoppression
women still suffer in many parts of the world. But they also say that
modern Western feminism has become a divisive and sometimes hateful
force, a movement that dramatically exaggerates female woes while
ignoring men’s problems, stifles dissenting views, and dwells
obsessively on men’s misbehavior and women’s personal wrongs. These are
trends about which feminists have voiced alarm in the past — including
the movement’s founding mother Betty Friedan, who tried in the 1970s to
steer feminism from the path of what she called “sex/class warfare.”
Friedan would have been aghast had she known that, 50 years after she
began her battle, feminist energies were being spent on bashing men who
commit the heinous crime of taking too much space on the subway.

Is there still a place in modern-day America for a gender equality
movement? I think so. Work-family balance remains a real and complicated
challenge. And there are gender-based cultural biases and pressures
that still exist — though, in 21st century Western countries,
they almost certainly affect men as much as women. A true equality
movement would be concerned with the needs and interests of both sexes.
It would, for instance, advocate for all victims of domestic and sexual
violence regardless of gender — and for fairness to those accused of
these offenses. It would support both women and men as workers and as
parents.
Should such a movement take back feminism — or, as the new
egalitarians suggest, give up on the label altogether because of its
inherent connotations of advocating for women only? I’m not sure what
the answer is. But Women Against Feminism are asking the right
questions. And they deserve to be heard, not harangued. As one of the
group’s graphics says: “I have my own mind. Please stop fem-splaining it to me.”

Monday, 21 July 2014

Just found out Johnny Winter died. Never a great fan, but I've always
loved this tune he did back in the day with Muddy Waters. It’s like a
hallucinogenic distillation of the purest, most concentrated male energy: a midnight ritual, punctuated by all those call and response screams
from the possessed, held somewhere in the Delta just on the border of space and time.

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

Okay, friends. Today’s lesson is going to be on the mysterious wage
gap, and you and I are going to debunk this once and for all, and then
some (you’ll know what I’m talking about soon). So sit down and buckle
up, because we’re in for a long ride.
Just so you know, we’ll be debunking myths by switching perspectives a
lot. And this is obviously US-centric for the most part. Try not to get
lost!

Let’s start with the primary argument some feminists tend to use.

"The Wage Gap™ is a result of sexism!"Explanation: This claim (usually made by the media
and politicians) asserts that the origin of the evil wage gap is rooted
in this ubiquitous discrimination all women supposedly face during their
jobs.
Something obviously sounds wrong here, but it’s not what you think.

It’s time for a history lesson.

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, which stated the following:

I AM delighted today to approve the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits arbitrary discrimination against women in the payment of wages.
This act represents many years of effort by labor, management, and
several private organizations unassociated with labor or management, to
call attention to the unconscionable practice of paying female employees
less wages than male employees for the same job. This measure adds to
our laws another structure basic to democracy. It will add
protection at the working place to the women, the same rights at the
working place in a sense that they have enjoyed at the polling place.

This Act granted working women the same rights as that of the working man, thereby enjoying the right to equal pay.

Next year, Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in which Section 703(a) defines the following employer practices as unlawful:

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual withrespect to his compensation,
terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such
individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for
employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any
individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his
status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin.

Essentially banning discrimination of wages based on sex.

So wait, why are all these companies so eager to commit an unlawful act by paying women less? How are they getting away with it?

Well… maybe they aren’t getting away with it - because they’re not committing an unlawful act.

That’s right, it’s time to switch perspectives here.

If their acts are lawful, meaning men and women are being paid the
same wages, then where’s the cause of the Wage Gap™ originating from?
Why are women still earning less if they’re doing the same job as men?
Maybe they’re not doing the same job… well not to the same ratio anyway.

See, the Wage Gap™ simply reflects the median earnings of all men and women classified as full-time workers. Technically, the only scenario in which there would be no wage discrepancy is when

The workforce is split up equally amongst the two sexes. 50/50

The number of women working the same job should be absolutely equal to the number of men working that job.

According to various studies and news articles however, men and women tend to gravitate toward different industries.

Clearly, we can see that women simply tend to choose lower-paying jobs.

Above is the most common and primary argument used to disprove the Wage Gap™ hypothesis: that it is not rooted in sexism, but in women’s choices and preferences.

However, I do agree with feminists who say that the inclination for
lower-paying jobs doesn’t completely explain the cause. This is true, as
there are actually several other factors involved.

I’ll be listing them all, sometimes in response to feminists’ rebuttals to the aforementioned primary argument.

1. WORKING HOURS"What about women working the same jobs as men? The wage gap exists there too!"
Okay, so let’s look at this from a different angle. If a man
and a woman are working the same job for the same wages, then where does
the discrepancy occur? They’re both supposed to be earning equal hourly
wages, right? That’s supposed to be the full-time wage.

So if a man works x hours a week and earns y salary, then a woman should also earn y salary for working for the same x hours a week.

Unless, of course, the woman works less than x hours a week.

According to the Wall Street Journal, men are about twice as
likely to work 40 hours in one week, while women are twice as likely to
work for about 35-39 hours a week.

Taken from last year’s official report released by US Bureau of Labor Statistics itself:

In general, employed women work fewer hours per week
than men. On average, women worked 35.8 hours per week in 2012, compared with 40.8 hours for men.

Warren Farrell, who spent about 15 years going over
U.S. Census statistics and research studies found that the wage gap
exists not because of sexism, but because more men are willing to do
certain kinds of jobs. "The average full-time working male works more than a full-time working female," Farrell said.

2. EDUCATION"Women are actually forced to take lower-paying jobs because they got rejected when they applied for higher-paying jobs!"

One factor that has not been counted in this claim is the kind of college degrees majority of either sex chooses.

Here we have common majors for each gender taken from Payscale.com

"As the above tables show, men are more likely to choose majors that
lead to higher incomes. Only two majors common for women pay a national
median pay over $60,000 (Nursing and Occupational Therapy), while 10 of
the 15 common majors for men pay at least $60,000. The average
pay across all of the common majors for men is $61,700, which is 35%
higher than the average pay across the common female majors ($45,600).

"Therefore, as women tend to choose majors that lead to lower income,
examining national median pay differences for all jobs across genders may just be reflecting these differing major choices.
The above pay figures show that women commonly choose majors that come
with lower salaries, thus leading (in part) to a lower national median
pay for women.”

Women tend to participate in fields that pay relatively less on average. Keep in mind that these majors pay less to both men and women, and women simply focus on these majors on a much greater scale by numbers as compared to men.

3. PREGNANCY AND MOTHERHOODLeaving the job market during pregnancy
When the mother comes back to the job (market), she’ll have lesser work experience
than most other men of the same age. Lesser work experience means lower
chance of getting picked over other people with the same degree of
education and age but with higher work experience.

Job options narrowed down to those that offer flexible hours
See, a woman with children will ideally prioritize her children, yes? So she’ll need to look for a job that offers flexible hours.

Unfortunately, not all jobs offer flexibility. So that diminishes job
options to mostly flexible jobs. Usually, jobs that offer flexible
hours will pay less, ceteris paribus, than those which don’t.

Married mothers as primary providers vs Single mothers
Married mothers opting to be the primary providers, will earn more
than single mothers. (Joint filing vs individual taxes, being one of the
reasons)This here leads to another discrepancy: because 63% are
single mothers, whereas the rest 37% are married mothers, yet married
moms earn way more than their single counterparts.

Moreover, in case of married mothers, the total family income is higher when the mother, not the father, is the primary breadwinner.

4. GENDER-DOMINATED WORK FIELDS"Men earn more than women in female-dominated fields!"

Actually, this goes both ways.

According to Forbes, women are earning ~8% more in male-dominated
fields while holding only 3% of such jobs. Some researchers even claim
that both sexes fare better when they are in the minority in any chosen field.

Inversely, there have been instances where women have earned more in female-dominated fields as well

On the opposite end of the spectrum, women also make more in a few
female-dominated education and healthcare jobs. Female teacher
assistants earn 105% as much as male peers. Women are 92% of the field
and earn a median of $474 a week, compared to men’s $453.Women also earn more than men in higher paying jobs like occupational therapists, dieticians and nutritionists, and life, physical, social science and health technicians.

5. BIOLOGY AND PSYCHE
Other factors also include physical strength,
which is needed for jobs like construction. Women are generally built
with lesser physical strength than men, so job options in heavy-labour
fields become diminutive for most.

There are also some psychological differences
between men and women that can lead to a discrepancy. For example, women
tend to prioritize childcare over profession, so they might drop out of
the job market if they decide to start a family. This happens due to
the biological instinct of a mother to nurture her children, so we
cannot entirely place the blame on society.

And there’s no reason to think that women will ever, on
average, have the same preferences as men about combining employment and
parenthood, or that they will want to become librarians and truck
drivers at the same rate as men.

And according to some studies that show that brains of women and men are structurally different, they reported that

Among the differences, men tended to have larger volumes in brain regions understood to be associated with survival instincts, memory and learning, while women tended to have larger volumes in areas of the brain dealing with emotions. This reinforces some commonly held gender stereotypes about the historical roles of men and women.

Another study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that

[…] colleagues found greater neural connectivity from front to
back and within one hemisphere in males, suggesting their brains are
structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action.
In contrast, in females, the wiring goes between the left and right
hemispheres, suggesting that they facilitate communication between the analytical and intuition.
For instance, on average, men are more likely better atlearning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group. They have a mentalistic approach, so to speak.

—
Right now, along with our primary argument, we’ve covered some other
factors that result in the Wage Gap™ which far outweigh and even
diminish the case of it simply being a consequence of discrimination
against women.

In conclusion, in order for there to be a gender pay gap, you need to have one gender being paid more than another, ceteris paribus.

But we’re not done yet, folks!

Some people claim that these facts aren’t ‘good enough’ and choose to
attack from a more subjective point of view. They bring female
socialization and gender roles into the mix, despite neither of these
being measurable factors. Some have rejected the idea that women choose
to work jobs that offer more comfort, low risk and high flexibility out
of their own free will and instead argue that women have been raised and
influenced by society to develop an inclination for jobs that
coincidentally(imo) have low pay. Examples provided below.

"Women are socialized into taking low-paying jobs!"
Okay, let’s look at this from another angle. If taking low-paying
jobs is indicative of socialization then what kind of job would not be
seen as a result of socialization?

Human bridges? Meaning careers based in sociology, liberal arts or psychology. In fact, they appealed to Brobama Obama to introduce stimulus packages for women that would add jobs for nurses, social workers, teachers, and librarians.

Higher availability of the aforementioned jobs in favour of women means that these jobs will become more lucrative to women seeking employment, regardless of whether they’re ‘ideal’ or not.
You see, in this age of unemployment, you tend to reach out for
any job that’s available. And if the position of a teacher is more
easily accessible (thanks Brobama!), as compared to that of say… an engineer, then an astute,goal-oriented woman might choose the option that’s within reach, forgoing one interest for another. Of course, that’s not always the case but it’s still a likely outcome.

Another similar argument put forward by some feminists is:"Women take jobs for low pay because they are groomed to be
submissive and to believe that they are not worthy, intelligent, strong,
etc!"

Tell me, dear friends, do you think a woman choosing to work
as a kindergarten teacher is a sign of subservience? When in fact,
she’ll probably find higher job satisfaction in that field of work than
working in the more stressful environment faced by a surgeon?

Here, see what made Cosmo’s list of Best Jobs for Women. All of the options indicate a high level of job satisfaction. This is probably the only time Cosmo is ever gonna be relevant to the discussion. Ever.
Just because we have different lines of work that are dominated
by either sex, it doesn’t mean that women choosing to work in a
female-dominated field, sometimes for lesser pay, is a display of
subservience. If anything, it’s a matter of convenience to
choose a job with higher satisfaction levels than whatever’s supposed
to be the so-called ideal job for your “strong, independent woman”
archetype.

While feminists suggest that women are coerced into
lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often
at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more
comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and
greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough
to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay
for other desirable job characteristics.

— Thoughts —
However, I do agree that all these factors I mentioned and the primary factor altogether may not be 100% of the cause
for the Wage Gap™. Yes, some studies even suggest that anywhere from 5%
- 40% of the cause of the difference remains unattributed.

Although, just because 5% to 40% of the cause is
supposedly unknown, workplace discrimination itself cannot be accurately
measured. So while there’s a possibility that discrimination can be a
factor, it still doesn’t determine how major or minimal of an impact it
has on the Wage Gap™.

I have yet to see any actual case studies regarding
workplace discrimination against women that can be considered as hard
evidence and has a quantitative function.

As a variable, discrimination/sexism itself can neither
be measured, nor can it be controlled. So while it most certainly
remains a possibility, there’s no reason to claim that it is a critical
factor as compared to the actual factors I’ve posted.

Interestingly enough, a research piece from the economists at the New York Federal Reserve reported, in a survey

What does the phrase “treated poorly in jobs available…”mean to you
Females reported: Women might be subject to jokes in strongly male-dominated fields, but men are more likely to be subject to worse treatment by female coworkers in strongly female-dominated fields. Poor treatment of women by men is much less socially acceptable than the reverse.

If discrimination really is a widespread issue then it affects both sexes and not just women.
I suppose socialization and gender roles may affect your
choice of career to some degree, but altogether that is purely
arbitrary. It varies case by case and cannot be measured as a
quantitative variable, so we cannot determine the extent to which it
affects career choices.

There is no way to figure out if the career choice a woman makes is due to her being conditioned by society. Since this logic of gender roles applies to men too, yet we have men working in female-dominated fields.

If you want to go down the “society is evil” route
then you must realize that it’s not a gendered issue. There are men who
would be affected by it as well.

While I won’t outright reject these possibilities, I won’t count them as important factors either.
The Wage Gap™ issue needs much more evidence before it can be proven, rather than assertions.Disclaimer: Regardless, I do think it’s a great idea
to encourage more young girls to participate in the science and IT
fields and inculcate leadership qualities… but they should not be forced
to show interest.
We should not ignore biological differences between many girls and boys that occur right from infancy.
According to a study done by Cambridge University,

Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger
interest in the physical-mechanical mobile (physical-mechanical object) while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face (social object). The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin.

However, we can’t ignore the notion that environment might play an important role too.

For example, it is reasonable to assume (as a possibility, not as a
fact) that a kid growing up in a household full of lawyers might also go
down that route due to heavy exposure to the field (opportunity to
attend court trials, for example) at a very young or developmental
stage.

But if the same child grows up to become a social worker instead,
then is it because of socialization and adherence to gender roles, or is
it simply due to some sort of mental inclination towards social
education, as an expression of a certain personality type (pedagogic
ENFJs, I’m looking at you)? Notice that I didn’t mention the gender of
the child.

Either way, biology or the environment certainly can influence
someone’s personality and decision-making ability but there’s no way of
knowing which can be the bigger determinant simply by looking at their
career choices.

Social influences are not a deciding factor, so we should respect a
person’s career choice as a result of him/her exercising the ability to
think independently. Saying that society influences women to be servile
is disrespectful to those who didn’t go for the job suitable for the
“strong, independent women” archetype simply due to a difference in
personal interests and goals… so it’s not really helping your cause at
all.

What’s interesting to note is that those who are in opposition or
critical of a woman’s choice (to take jobs that offer relatively low
pay) generally tend to be the ones who abstain from entering scientific or tech fields, both of which are higher-paying.

Not that I’m implying anything. :)

Another Disclaimer: Whatever’s mentioned under —Thoughts— is just that - my own opinion.
You can either agree with it, or we can agree to disagree. Or we could
discuss it privately if you’d like. Preferably as mature adults, thanks!

The Librarian

“I have no doubt that, someday, the distortion of truth by the radical feminists of our time will be seen to have been the greatest intellectual crime of the second half of the twentieth century. At the present time, however, we still live under the aegis of that crime, and calling attention to it is an act of great moral courage” - Professor Howard S. Schwartz, of Oakland University in Michigan, USA, 2001